Doctor, Doctor
by IAmAurora
Summary: Eames had worked with doctors before. He had tipped them off, bought them out, even occasionally impersonated one in a dream. But never like this.
1. Prologue

**Doctor, Doctor**

**I own nothing except my own OC, whom you don't even meet until next chapter.**

**Pairing**: Eames/OC

**Summary**: Eames had worked with doctors before. He had tipped them off, bought them out, even occasionally impersonated one in a dream. But never like this.

* * *

**Prologue**

Ariadne stared blankly at her ceiling. It was three in the morning and she couldn't sleep. In fact, she hadn't slept in 24 hours. She woke up at precisely three a.m. the night before, noticing a strange void within her. She hadn't dreamt.

It had been two years since first having been pulled in to the dream business by Dominic Cobb and his damned job offer. After having 'compelled' Robert Fischer to disband his father's empire, the team had performed multiple extractions and one other inception, all based out of California so that Cobb could stay close to his children.

She had been warned about and was waiting for the day that dreams would cease to come naturally to her, but now that the time had arrived, she was discomforted by it. There was an odd and significant difference between not remembering her dreams and consciously recognizing that she no longer had them. In truth, this knowledge creeped her out.

She picked up her phone and pressed a button. After a few rings, a voice came thinly over the line.

"Dominic Cobb."

"Cobb, it's me."

"Ariadne? Jesus Christ, it's three a.m. What so fucking important that it couldn't wait until morning?"

"Cobb. I'm not dreaming anymore." She heard a sigh over the phone, and imagined him running a hand over his face while staring intently at nothing on the floor.

He sighed again. "I told you this would happen."

"I know. I just didn't expect it to feel so…"

"Unnatural?"

"Yeah. Unnatural."

"Well, I can't really help you with this, nothing's gonna bring them back. You kind of just have to come to terms with it yourself. Try to sleep. You can still sleep, even if you don't dream."

"I don't want to sleep without dreaming."

"It's the only option." She mulled things over for a minute.

"Ariadne?" Cobbs voice brought her back to the present moment: 3:15 a.m., awake and dreamless for 48 hours.

"Dom." She could hear that her use of his first name called him to attention.

"Yeah, Ari?"

"Dom, couldn't we get a doctor?"

"Ari, nobody knows what goes on in our heads-"

"That's what I mean, Dom. Couldn't we get a doctor to take a look at us? To figure out what's wrong with our heads and maybe get our dreams back for us?"

"Are we talking like a shrink? Cause I think I've heard from people that other teams have tried therapy and it didn't work so well."

"We won't use a shrink then. We'll use a legitimate neurologist. I have a friend."

"Ariadne, I don't know-"

"Come on Cobb. I've known her for _years_. We went to school together."

"What school?" He had her there.

"High school."

"So you haven't seen her in years."

"No. We were best friends, though."

"And you trust this girl?"

"…Yes. With my life."

"You're not trusting her with your life, Ari. You're giving her your mind."

"…I trust her with that, too."

"Then go for it. Good luck."

"You're not in?"

"Not right now. Let me know how it goes and we'll see."

"Alright. Night."

"Night. Sleep, Ariadne."

"I'll try, but no promises." She hung up the phone. Pulling up her contacts list, she shuffled through them until she found the number she was looking for. It went strait to voicemail. Typical.

"Bonjour," came the recorded greeting, "vous avez contactez Madeleine de Niort. Laissez-moi un message et j'essaierai de vous rappeler tout de suite. Merci!"

After the beep sounded, Ariadne took a breath and started what she hoped would revolutionize her world. Again.

"Bonjour, Maddi. It's Ariadne. Remember me? It's been a while, non? Listen, I have a proposition. Last I heard, you'd passed your boards and were looking for a Ph.D. thesis . I hope your still in that search, since I've got a good one for you. Call me back. You have my number."

As she put down the phone and crawled back under her covers, Ariadne mused that she sounded oddly like a combination of Arthur's professionalism and Eames' lightheartedness. She fell into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

A translation of Madeleine's voicemail message: "Hello, you have reached Madeleine de Niort. Leave me a message and I'll try to call you back as soon as possible. Thanks!"

Thank you for reading this far! This will, hopefully, be my first full length story. I already have a few chapters written and the inspiration just seems to keep coming!


	2. Chapter 1

**Doctor, Doctor**

**I own nothing except my own OC, whom you meet in this chapter. And my plotline too.**

**Pairing**: Eames/OC

**Summary**: Eames had worked with doctors before. He had tipped them off, bought them out, even occasionally impersonated one in a dream. But never like this.

* * *

**Chapter One**  
**Portrait of the Artists as Young Women**

Madeleine Aurélie de Niort lounged on the bed of her Parisian apartment, smoking a cigarette. An unorthodox habit, considering the M.D. permanently attached to her name. Fuck it, she thought, it's my body - I'll do with it what I want; nobody gives a shit that I'm killing myself. Madeleine was a socialite and knew people, to be sure; her wealth and status forbade her otherwise. But she was unmarried, childless and (figuratively, at least) without family. Friends? She had some, but none with which she was particularly close.

She had just kicked out her latest toy, after having thoroughly enjoyed him. The sex had been rough and repeated, just like she liked it. Checking her phone afterwards, though, she noticed that she had missed a call from her long-ago best friend and fell out of the mood to entertain the boy any longer. So she told him to leave. He had been bewildered, sure, but she gave him a level look and told him that, maybe, she'd call him later. He had dressed and left.

Lighting up while entering the password to her voicemail, Madeleine listened to Ariadne's message. She hung up, thinking. She finished one cigarette and lit another, still thinking. She _had_ been in need of a good thesis, and thought she had found it while studying under a prominent neurologist at l'Institut Pasteur: a study of the effect of LSD on the occipital lobe of one-time and abusive users. What could her petite architect friend have to offer that was better than what she already had? Madi decided to, at least, hear her out.

Taking one last drag, she put out the cigarette and settled back to sleep.

In the morning, Madeleine called Ariadne back, gushing fake exclamations about how much she had missed her, how they should have tried harder to stay in touch, especially since Ariadne had been in Paris so recently while working towards her masters in architecture. They had run across each other once, by accident, and spent the day together. That had been four years ago, when Madeleine was finishing up her second year of medical school, Ariadne completing her first year of graduate school; they hadn't spoken since. Ariadne, though, had obviously been keeping on top of what Madi up to.

Madeleine knew that Ariadne could cut through all the bullshit that she was spewing to hear what Madeleine actually meant, hearing the girl who had been her best friend through the four long years of high school in a foreign country. The showy enthusiasm was just part of Madeleine's personality.

Ariadne's parents had divorced when she was in ninth grade in Philadelphia: her mother, having been granted custody, moved to Paris to live with her new artist boyfriend. Ariadne had been allowed to finish up the school year in the states before moving to France to continue her secondary education.

Once in the city of light, Ariadne did little except walk from her apartment to a small café just around the corner. After two weeks of haunting the same table, her routine was interrupted: a stranger joined her at the table. When the same stranger joined her three more times within the week, Ariadne concluded that perhaps she should introduce herself.

"Hello," she remembered saying.

The girl had given her a look, the one Ariadne would learn was signature Madeleine, and said, in perfect British English, "dear, you are in France now. You should make an effort to speak the language. People will like you a lot better."

Ariadne had flushed and practically buried her face back into her mug of café-au-lait.

"Mais," the girl continued, "ne t'inquiet pas. I have not written you off yet. Do you speak French at all?"

"Un petit peu," Ariadne had whispered. The stranger beamed at Ariadne's conscious attempt, apparently happy that she had heeded the given advice.

"Bon! It is easier for me, then, to get you started here in my fine city, if you can at least speak a little." Ariadne would later learn that the girl really did mean 'my fine city.' In hindsight, Ariadne realized how much she had yet to learn about the girl at the café, things she never would have expected from a seemingly innocent stranger.

"Je m'appelle Madeleine Aurélie de Niort, mais tu peux m'appelles Madi. Comment t'appelles-tu?"

"Ariadne."

"Ar-i-ad-ne. C'est pas si facile à prononcé, non? Alors, tu t'appelles Ari." Madi smiled again. It really was an excellent smile. Ariadne felt that she should have been put off by the fact that, within a minute of a formal introduction, someone she barely knew had already gotten rid of her old name, her old identity really, and had given her a new one. But that smile…all Ariadne could want to feel was that someone was there to help her adjust to a new life. As opposed to her mother, who had displaced her daughter just to show her ex-husband that she could.

"Donc, Ari. Quel âge as-tu? Quinze? Seize?"

"Presque quinze ans. Mon anniversaire est demain."

"Ah! Oui? Bon! Nous allons le fêter. Moi, j'ai quatorze ans. Je suis née le quatorze juillet, et, alors, je dois attendre un mois. You will go to a public high school, here, yes?"

"Yes."

"Which?"

"I've tested into and enrolled at Lycée Louis-le-Grand."

"Shame," Madi frowned. "I'm at Lycée Henri-IV myself. One of us will have to switch then. Have you any friends at Louis-le-Grand?"

"No. I haven't met anyone yet."

"Perfect! I'll facilitate your switch to Henri tomorrow. We shall make a grand time of it!"

Since that first meeting the two had been practically inseparable, fast friends, as they say. Ariadne had though Madi far too pushy for her personal tastes, but Madeleine's perseverance eventually drew Ariadne out of her shell. They fit well together. Ariadne needed someone to help her adjust to life in another country where she didn't speak the language fluently and Madi needed someone whom she could dote on, and who would dote on her in return.

By the time they had graduated high school, the pair were different people from the two who had met at a café and, while they agreed that their adolescent friendship had been extremely beneficial to their social development, they felt that they could go off into life on their own.

On one level, they had succeeded. Ariadne had become much more confident in who she was: never again would she make the trip from her apartment to a café the extent of her travels for a week, but she retained an element of her shyness. Madi, while not really losing her superiority complex, had lost the heavy touch of condescension she had often carried through their first year of secondary education. She chose to show people that she was better, whether intellectually or financially, rather than strait up tell them, as she had done on a few occasions.

Putting it like that, Ariadne realized, made it sound like a highly dysfunctional relationship, which was pretty close to the truth, but their friendship had superseded the initial superficiality of Madi's exuberance, and the two came to truly trust each other. Their parting had been overwhelmingly bittersweet.

"Yes, Madi," Ariadne said, pulling herself out of the past and into the present. "It's good to hear from you again. I trust I didn't interrupt anything last night?"

"Chérie. My mobile was turned off. You didn't interrupt."

Ariadne laughed. "Good. Regard, what are you up to now?"

"Right now? This very moment?"

"No, not immediately. What are you doing over the course of the week? Anything important that can be postponed?"

"No, nothing so serious. Why?"

"I want you to fly out, to California, so we can meet face-to-face."

"Oh?" Ariadne smiled at the fact that her friend still used the exclamation in place of a more conventional 'why?'.

"I told you about a thesis proposal. I think you'll really like to hear it."

"And you can't tell me over the phone?"

"No."

"Because?"

"Can't tell you that over the phone either."

"Chérie, you have piqued my curiosity. And you know how my curiousity nags me. I'll be on a plane later today; expect me tonight. LAX?"

"Is that the closest you can get to Malibu?"

"It's the closest public airport, and I don't have enough time to pull strings for a private landing strip."

"Alright. Let me know what time you expect to be in."

"I'll send you an SMS." Madi hung up.

An hour later, Madi told her that she just barely caught a noon (Pacific Standard Time) flight to LA, so she would be in around midnight.

Calling up Arthur, Ariadne made sure that she was waiting in baggage claim from her flight at 11:30. When the luggage started coming up, Ariadne watched it closely. Pointing out a bag to Arthur, she told him to pull it off the luggage belt.

"How do you know it's hers?"

"I just do."

"Alright." After he pulled the large black leather suitcase off, Ariadne flipped open the identification card and confirmed that the bag did, indeed, belong to Madi.

"ARI!" A voice shouted across the hall. Almost every head turned to the woman who yelled and then to search for the woman she was yelling to. Ariadne turned bright red while Arthur just smirked.

"She never was one to avoid scenes," she mumbled to him while the woman steadily walked closer.

When she started to jog towards the pair, Ariadne started to jog towards her too. They met half way and hugged fiercely.

"Il y a longtemps que je ne t'ai pas vue, non, Ari? Tu me manques beaucoup! C'est bon de te revoir," Madi smiled down at Ariadne. She was literally smiling down, Arthur noted, as he walked over to the pair with her bag; Madi was a good eight inches taller. Arthur also noticed that Madi was holding a pair of high heels in her hands, leaving stockings between her feet and the floor.

Looking beyond Ariadne, Madi first noticed her bag sitting on the floor, and smirked back at Ariadne. She then noticed Arthur and, putting on her heels, practically slinked over to him. Turning her head to Ariadne, but keeping her eyes on him the entire time, Madi smirked again and asked,

"Et qui est-il, Ari?"

Arthur responded, in his own French.

"Bonjour, madame, je m'appelle Arthur. Je suis un ami d'Ariadne." They shook hands.

"Un ami d'Ari? Un tel ami est un ami de moi aussi. Bonjour, je m'appelle Madeleine, si vous ne déjà savez pas. C'est enchanté de vous rencontrer, Arthur." She was clearly flirting.

Arthur had to admit, it was rather enchanting to meet her too. As he had previously noticed, Madeleine was tall, especially in her shoes. She was dressed in a sharp traveling suit, impeccably tailored to her slender figure. Her hair was neatly combed and securely up. While her makeup seemed almost non-existent, a master hand at mascara and eye-liner gave her a wildly sultry look, which only amplified the playfully seductive spark that lit up her eyes when she first saw him.

Madi and Ariadne were muttering softly in French behind him while they walked to the car. As they were leaving the airport, Madi had surreptitiously taken her bag from Arthur's hands, all while continuing to talk to Ariadne. He had looked at her in surprise and tried to tell her that he would be glad to carry it, but she gave him a look while answering a question, and he simply fell silent.

Even for someone whose job it was to pay close attention to small details in an attempt to glean all information, Arthur was quickly learning that she would not be a quick study. She seemed to both fully embrace the fact that she was a woman and assert to the world that she could care for herself at the same time. He, however, had some background information on the Parisian behind him, not that he could ever let her know that.

The two women sat in the back seat of the BMW; Madi only talked to him once more that night, to tell him the address of her hotel. Dropping her off there, she let the bellboy take her bag inside the building, while turning back to hug and kiss Ariadne, who had exited the car to say goodnight to her friend. Arthur was watching everyone else in or near the lobby and drop-off at the hotel: they too seemed to be spellbound by the woman.

When Ariadne had settled herself back into the passenger's seat, Arthur drove off towards her apartment.

"Would you care to explain?" He asked.

"Yeah," Ariadne sighed. "Madi is a friend from a long time ago. I've invited her state-side for a proposition. We're going to talk tomorrow and we'll see if she stays."

"What proposition?"

"She's looking for a Ph.D. thesis."

"And what, exactly, is it you're offeringing?"

"Myself. To study the effect of dream sharing."

"Why?"

She paused, looking at him impatiently. "To study the effect of dream sharing."

"Let me rephrase. Why do you want her to study the effect of dream sharing?"

"Arthur," she said softly. He glanced at her and noticed that she wasn't looking at him anymore. He pulled over to the side of the road.

"What is it, Ari?"

"Arthur, I stopped dreaming last night. It's stupid, I know, since I've been expecting this for quite a while, but, even still, I can't get over the feeling of missing something, of being unnatural. I miss dreaming already. There's an odd but…noticeable difference between not remembering your dreams and not dreaming at all."

"So you've called in someone to try and figure out why."

"Yeah, I guess. I talked to Cobb last night and he said that other teams have tried to talk to Psychiatrists about it but apparently it just didn't help. So I thought, hey, why not move beyond the psychological level into the biological level."

"And how do you know Madi enough to trust her with this?"

"Madi and I were best friends in high school. She helped me transition from living in Pennsylvania to living in France. She's now two years into her residency at some hospital in Paris and, as I said, is looking for a Ph.D. thesis. I know it's rather unconventional for her to not be assigned to a project by the lab she is working in, but I think you'll find that there's not a lot that's totally conventional about her." Arthur pulled the car back on to the road.

"Is she always so…" He searched for the word.

"Seductive?" Ariadne supplied. "Yes. Please don't get sucked in by it. I told her to back off, since it'd be awkward if you were fawning over her in front of me." Arthur raised his eyebrow at her. "Don't give me that look," she continued, "you know what I mean. But yes, she's been like that since forever. But, I mean, she's always been gorgeous, so you can't really blame her. People started just gravitating towards her once she started high school and she kind of just learned to turn it to her advantage."

"So she manipulates people."

"If she feels it to be to her advantage, then yes. But not always."

"I see."

"Don't think less of her. She's got her vices, yes, but, at heart, she's one of the most loyal people I know. As I said to Dom, I'd trust her with both my life and my mind. She's wholly competent. I have complete faith that, if she takes up my offer, she'll get to the bottom of whatever it is that's going on in our brains."

"I noticed you didn't say she was a good person."

"I'm still not so sure about that myself. A bit like Eames in that regard. You can trust him, especially when it comes to the job, but you're never quite sure outside of the workplace."

"So what's your plan?"

"Regarding what?"

"Regarding her experiment."

"Well, I'll tell her what I propose and, uh, and," she trailed off, realizing she didn't have much of a plan besides giving her friend a thesis.

"Don't worry, Ariadne. If she accepts, I have some connections at UCLA who owe me a favor. I can hook her up with connections there." They pulled up to her apartment building.

"I don't know if that's necessary, but all right. Thank you, Arthur. For not calling me crazy. For driving me and her. Speaking of which, it's late. Do you want to come in for some coffee?" Arthur couldn't not to notice the glint in Ariadne's eyes.

He pretended to think and told her that he wouldn't mind some coffee. Parking the car on the sidewalk, they walked up to the fourth floor and went inside.

As he expected, coffee lead to talking and, well, talking led to the next thing and Arthur ended up spending the night.

Hours later, Madi, lounging on the bed in her hotel room, finished leaving a message for her friend.

"_Ari, I know you're probably busy with the boy you brought along today, but I want to let you know that I'll be over around noon tomorrow, as planned. Could you send someone? I realize know that I never got your address, and I don't like pulling strings in regards to friends. Feels too much like spying. How about we get lunch, then get coffee back at your apartment and you can tell me whatever it was you couldn't say over the phone. Let me know, chérie. A demain."_

* * *

These are the translations to the conversation between Madeleine and Ariadne in Paris, along with some notes on the subjects brought up.

"But, don't worry…"

"A little bit."

"My name is Madeleine Aurélie de Niort, but you can call me Madi. What's your name?"

"Ar-i-ad-ne. That's not very easy to pronounce. Well, then, you're name is Ari."

"Ari, how old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Almost fifteen. My birthday is tomorrow."

"Really? Good! We'll celebrate. I, myself, am fourteen. I was born on July 14th, so I have to wait a month."

Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Lycée Henri-IV are Paris' top two high schools, and are generally considered two of the best high schools in the world. The French school system is very complicated to a non-native (and I'm a non-native, so it doesn't make much sense to me), so I'll refrain from trying to explain, but these two schools are public high schools and are very competitive to get accepted to. Generally, students who go to these two schools are pretty much set for life.

Lycée means high school in French, and generally refers to grades 10, 11 and 12 (so ages 15-17, assuming the summer birthdays of our girls)

Chérie means dear. Kind of like Eames saying darling, but it is a decently feminine thing to do, if not a touch old.

Regard, literally, means Look. Kind of like, Hey or Listen or Look. Used to get attention.

SMS = Short Message Sservice, basically the European name for a text.

Ellen Page is 5'1" according to ; Madi is supposed to be 5'9".

"It's been quite a long time, Ari! I missed you a lot! It's good to see you again."

"Who is he, Ari?"

"Hello, ma'am, my name is Arthur. I'm a friend of Ariadne's."

"A friend of Ariadne's? A friend of her's is a friend of mine. Hello, my name is Madeleine if you didn't already know that. It's lovely to meet you, Arthur."

Note: in French, 'th' is not the soft 'thhhh' sound as in English, where we force air between our tongues and our front teeth; it is instead pronounced as a 't' sound. It would sound like Artur. Just a fun fact.

**A/N: let me know if you'd rather have the translations right next to the dialogue. I thought it'd look sloppy that way, but it's probably easier to read, so…yeah. Tell me what you'd like.**

**This is supposed to be a little mysterious, especially in regards to the relationships between characters. A lot of things get smoothed out pretty quickly, since I think too much secrecy over a long period of time (read – a lot of chapters) makes for a confusing read. And when things get confusing…people stop reading. Let me know if things get too confusing, alright? I'll try to clear them up.**


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